Let go

The new year means, among many other things, that I start a new folder of business stuff for the year. My 2007 business folder was automated to back up to an off-site server whenever I typed a simple command into Terminal, but for the new folder, that would have to be changed. Trouble is, I use my Mac as a tool and know nothing about things like nano (at least I knew it wasn’t an iPod reference) and other Terminal-ish stuff.

So I emailed my tech support guy. In my case, that is luckily my brother and he immediately sent me the changes. They were incredibly simple to do in the end, but I required something like 8 emails between us and a phone call to walk me through the process before I got it right.

This is a very small example of where hiring other professionals makes great sense. I should not, ever, do anything tech-ish with my Mac. If it needs to be done, it is a much better idea for me to hire a pro (even if that is my brother) to do it than to try and learn it myself. I do not need to know what “nano” is or “rsync” or whatever.

You photographers need to learn when to let go too. Now, it may make sense for you to learn more tech stuff than I need to because of how you need to use your machines. But it does not makes sense for you to learn, for example, how to use some website building application. Why? Because you don’t *need* to know that information. Knowing how to use the app doesn’t mean you can build an effective and well designed website; just like a dentist knowing all the technical details for how his Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III works doesn’t mean his images will be great.

Learning things you don’t really need to know is often a way to get in your own way of success. We think that by learning how to build a site we can save ourselves money by doing it ourselves or that we can style our own shoots or that we can design our own promos. But in all of those cases, you will end up with results that will not be as good as if they were done by a pro. Worse yet, you will spend much more than than you think doing these things, time you could better spend shooting new work and exploring your vision or making calls or researching new targets, and your time costs you money!

You are not free. Your labor is not free. Your thinking is not free. It either costs a client or it costs you whenever you do anything in your business. It is much better for your business for you to hire a pro than for you to do tasks for which a pro is better suited. You will end up saving money. The end result will also probably be better.

This is also true for a lot of your general marketing tasks. If you don’t make calls or don’t get your mailers out on schedule or don’t update your lists, etc., regularly, then you should consider hiring a Marketing Assistant to do that work for you. Let’s say you hire an MA for 5 hours a week at $15/hour–that’s $75 which we’ll add 50% to cover hidden costs related to having an employee (though that is probably much higher than necessary if you are not offering healthcare insurance)–$112.50 a week. Isn’t not having to screw around with labeling and mailing and updating lists and making calls, etc., worth it? Couldn’t you find better ways to spend those 5 hours yourself?

Let go of the stuff you don’t need to do yourself. You’ll business will thank you.